Geared Up To Go Green

In today's tight economy more consumers are focused on green. Stop, Swap, and Save is a local event providing Swap goers with plenty of it, environmentally as well as financially.

In its 12th straight year, Stop Swap, and Save offers a venue for cyclists to converge, merge, and purge. Shop owners clean out old stock while home owners reclaim their garages. Attendees can buy, trade, or barter all things bike.

A bike swap gives the consumer the opportunity to hold the products in his hands, making it a friendlier alternative to Ebay. There were many used bikes on sale for a good price at Stop, Swap, and Save. Potential buyers could test ride the bikes and talk to the previous owners first hand before deciding.

From high end Italian components, vintage frames, or boxes of half rusted nuts and bolts, the Bike Swap has plenty to offer a bargain shopper. Even seemingly unusable parts are another artist's treasure.

One vendor, The Bicycle Escape from Frederick, put that practice to good use. They sold out of cheap key chains made from old rescued parts. Scrap metal saved from the landfills and into your pockets.

Tom Rinker, a Bicycle Escape technician, says they recycle wherever they can. They buy in bulk to reduce packaging, turn old parts into other products like key chains, and donate tires and others items to organizations such as Bikes for the World. They even sold nameplates (the curved metal plate that typically displays the logo on the stem) made out of discarded bottle caps.

Bikes for the World, a co-sponsor of the Bike Swap, collects donated bicycles and ships them overseas to individuals in disadvantaged situations. Throughout 2008, Bikes for the World delivered an average of 28 bikes every day to non-profit partner programs overseas. That's over 10,000 bikes in the hands of cyclists last year alone.

It's not all used gear, however. For the gear head shopper with funds to spend, the uber-green Bamboo frame is an excellent choice, and Mt. Airy Bikes had one on display you could fondle. The Calfee frame is made from the renewable bamboo hardwood and bonded together with resin-soaked hemp.

Give owner Larry Black five minutes and he will convince the minimalist couple, shopping to reduce its carbon footprint, to join his elite tandem club by selling you, instead of two bicycles, a bicycle built for two.